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WHAT ARE WE FIGHTING FOR? 


A LETTER TO 

HOEACE GREELEY. 

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NEW YORK: 

Carleton , Publisher , 413 Broadway, 


MDCCCLXII. 


















WHAT ARE WE FIGHTING FOR? 


A LETTER TO HORACE GREELEY. 


Horace Greeley : 

Sir —Able editor as you are, you seem to be some¬ 
what in the dark. What do you think we are fighting 
for ? Why have we 500,000 men under arms ? Why 
do we spend money at the rate of a million of dollars a 
day? Why, when we see our friends, our sons, our 
brothers come back sick and wounded, when we know 
that some of them shall never return, do we yet, at a 
word, the scratch of a pen, send fifty thousand more, 
being some of us part of that fifty thousand ?—for we 
send ourselves. Why, when we as a people are spend¬ 
ing a million of dollars daily in this war, do we as indi¬ 
viduals give tens, hundreds, thousands to ensure as far 
as possible the health and comfort of our soldiers? 
Why, when our brothers are borne out of the ranks 
maimed and suffering do our sisters throng to the hospi¬ 
tals until the doors have to be closed against their eager 
feet ? 

To put d )wn the rebellion. 

But why must the rebellion be put down further than 
it is now ? Though Mr. Mason has kept his word and 
not revisited Boston except as an ambassador, Mr. 



4 


Toombs has concluded to postpone indefinitely calling 
the roll of his slaves in the shadow of Bunker Hill 
monument; and, although General Pierre Toutant, alias 
Beauregard, has shown his usual disregard of his word 
in not watering his horse in Hell because he failed to do 
it in the Tennessee river, still we must allow something 
to his constitutional failing (which, by the way, seems 
to be hi*s only Constitutional weakness), and we may 
rest assured that General Halleck will give him an 
early opportunity of telling the truth for once since the 
outbreak of the rebellion, and retiring with his charger 
to the summer quarters he had in mind. As to Washing- 
ton, Ex-Senator Davis will probably take that and Heaven 
by storm together; and so we may sleep in quiet. But 
in sad and sober earnest, what absolute need is there of a 
further prosecution of this war ? For the need must be 
surpassing which justifies, not to say hallows, such a 
sacrifice of blood and treasure as we are making. 

Our only and our ample justification is the paramount 
necessity to this nation, and to the cause of human pro¬ 
gress throughout the world, that this Government and 
the principles of this Government should be maintained, 
that the [Republic shall not be destroyed. We live 
and act under the abiding consciousness that in this 
land, and by our race, rational liberty was first estab¬ 
lished, that here first was every citizen safely placed 
upon a political equality with every other citizen. We 
firmly believe that our fathers, building perhaps (wise 
as they were) “better than they knew,” solved the 
great political problem of strength without centraliza¬ 
tion, by ensuring national sovereignty and local inde¬ 
pendence, and making them compatible. We know 
that the welfare of ourselves and our posterity, and we 
have a conviction that the hopes of mankind, are bound 
up in the perpetuation and the prosperity of this Bepub- 



5 


lie, which the finally unseated politicians of the South 
wonld rend asunder in their jealous rage. Therefore 
we fight. We fight for the Republic, for the preserva¬ 
tive principle of permanent union against the disintegra¬ 
tive doctrine of confederacy ; to secure the blessings of 
our powerful, beneficent, cheap, lightly-felt government 
“ to ourselves and our posterity.” We fight to crush 
forever the infamous assumption that those who are 
defeated in an election may then rightfully rebel. The 
nation has said in effect to the leading politicians of the 
Slave States, There shall be no more slave territory. 
They have replied, We will not submit; and we have 
rejoined, It is both lawful and right that you should 
submit, and you shall submit, or we will know the 
reason why. For this we fight. We fight, too, that there 
may be an end forever of the talk of State sovereignty, 
of State opposition, or, more absurd, of State neutral¬ 
ity, to the national will constitutionally declared:—- 
that a citizen of the United States may be safe under the 
protection, if not of local law, then of national law in 
every part of the country ; in South Carolina as well as 
in Massachusetts, in Mississippi as well as in Ohio :—- 
that the monstrous talk of an “ invasion ” of one State 
by the residents of another may be never heard of more; 
and that a town which resists the passage through it of 
citizens of the United States, armed or unarmed, by the 
orders of the President of the United States, shall, if 
needs must, be laid flat, as flat as the palm of a man’s 
hand, so that an army of grasshoppers may march over 
it. And finally, we fight for freedom of speech and of 
the press, that every custom, law, or institution of this 
country, local or national, may be the subject of free 
discussion in every part of it, and remain open to the 
influence of the moral powers that are at work, through 
Christ’s grace, in this world. If there be any institution 
1 * 


6 


in the land which cannot bear this freedom and this discus¬ 
sion, it must go out of the land, and that as soon as may 
be. For this we fight, and suffer, and sacrifice; and did 
we not fight, and suffer, and sacrifice for this unto the 
bitter end, we should be moral bastards, renegades. 


But you, sir, honest, able, and truly a lover of your 
country and your kind, a man whose life has been 
worth more to others than to himself, you, and a few 
whom you have led with you, or who were ready to fol¬ 
low any voice that spoke your words, seem to think that 
we are, or should be, fighting for something else. Some 
allowance should indeed be made for you in considera¬ 
tion of the .binding force of the Tribune creed, the car¬ 
dinal points of which may be conveniently stated as, 
1st, that every man should pay his own postage; 2d, 
that all the fruits of the earth not converted into men 
or other animals should be returned to the earth as 
manure ; 3d, that every human being should vote. Im¬ 
portant points, for the establishment of which a man 
may honorably labor. But as the world is constituted 
it happens that there are matters of more pressing mo¬ 
ment, which must be first attended to, and among them 
is the maintenance of the constitutional government of 
this Bepublic, for which we are in arms this day. But 
you, alive to the importance of the third point of the 
Tribunistic creed, and not seeing that suffrage and citi¬ 
zenship are not natural rights, but privileges, and must 
needs be so,—you seem to be on tenter-hooks of appre¬ 
hension lest that government should be sustained Con¬ 
stitutionally, or in any way, without insuring freedom 
to all slaves, and, at least, the prospect of a vote to all 
negroes. You vote heartily for the war measure, but 
you saddle it with your everlasting negro as a rider. 


7 


Sir, the people of this country have heard enough of 
this talk, and will no longer hear it. Because disap¬ 
pointed slaveholding politicians have done one wrong, 
we are not to try to make it right by doing another. 
By the organic compact, in virtue of which we became 
a nation, by the very charter of our political existence, 
the people of every State have a right to manage their 
local government as they please, so long as they make 
no law conflicting with “ the supreme law of the land.” 
If the people of Massachusetts or New York chose to 
say that every man may have six wives—of which 
there is about as much chance as that the Pope will in¬ 
flict a similar privilege upon all his priests—the people 
of the other States must needs acquiesce, or rather not 
acquiesce, which would be impertinence, but simply 
mind their own business! They might remonstrate; 
but beyond this the only alternative would be submission 
or revolution. Now, as to the relations of this nation 
with the negro, they must be put upon the footing of jus¬ 
tice as soon as may be, consistently with justice in regard 
to immeasurably higher interests. The blight and the blot 
of slavery must be prevented from spreading by all con¬ 
stitutional means (and they are sufficient); and those 
who would propagate slavery must submit, whether 
they like it or not. But as to slavery where it is, ad¬ 
mitting all the wrong that it inflicts, and the ruin that 
it brings upon those who inflict the wrong, that must 
stand until it is done away by those who are responsi¬ 
ble for it. The removal of the curse of slavery from 
this land is a blessing to be hoped for, to be worked for, 
and to be looked for, as surely as the establishment of 
truth and right; the sooner, too, for this wicked, mad, 
rebellion, which seeks to spread and to perpetuate it. 
But it must come in by the lawful exercise of the con¬ 
stitutional rights of every citizen of the United States. 


8 


The plighted faith of this nation is of greater moment 
than the immediate freedom of a wilderness of negroes. 

We who are sustaining the Government of the United 
States demand that they who are attacking it, should 
abide by the Constitution, and seek redress for their 
wrongs, if they have any, under the Constitution. Who 
needs to be told that a compact, if insisted upon at all, 
must be maintained in all its parts ? We must ourselves 
obey the law to which we seek to compel obedience. Let 
us either abide by the Constitution, or, like men, set it 
openly at naught. Let not rebels be honester than loyal 
men. If what the insurgents have said and done has ab¬ 
solved us of our allegiance to the Constitution, let us avow 
it, and act accordingly. But the people are not quite 
ready for this conclusion or this course. To insist that 
South Carolina or Massachusetts shall preserve their alle¬ 
giance, to a constitution from which something has been 
taken, or to which something has been added, without 
consulting her, is to justify her refusal, that is her rebel¬ 
lion, before God and man. 

All this you regard not. Your eye is so firmly fixed 
upon the far off negro’s freedom, that you cannot see 
the immediate peril of your country. You seem to be¬ 
lieve that the way to the near lies through the remote. 
You would put down the rebellion by proclaiming free¬ 
dom to the slaves. You have even called General Hun¬ 
ter’s proclamation of liberty to those in South Carolina 
and Georgia, assuming to declare their freedom forever 
by his mere temporary martial law, “ a blow between 
the eyes.” It was a blow into the empty air; feebleness 
fulminated into the infinity of space. It is the laughing 
stock of the world now, and will be that of posterity. 
Proclaim freedom to slaves for the purpose of putting 
down the rebellion! Why, where the national army 
cannot go such a proclamation is not worth the paper 


9 


on which it is written; it might as well be promulgated 
by Mr. Barnum from the top of his museum; and where 
the army does go, rebellion never existed or is put down 
already. The effect of such attempts at emancipation 
can only be to confirm rebellious contumacy, to fulfil 
rebellious prophecy, and to justify rebellion in all im¬ 
partial eyes, even among those who hate slavery. 


Yet one more remonstrance againBt one other error, 
and that a grievous one. You continually affront all of 
your fellow citizens, except the few who are so perversely 
constituted as to feel with you, by moaning over the 
folly of not accepting the services of “the only loyal 
men,” “the real Unionists” of the South, and by your 
extravagant laudations of “ the faithful among the faith¬ 
less.” Forgetting that we are not engaged in war with 
a foreign foe to whom we seek to do all the harm we 
can by every means in our power, you ceaselessly de¬ 
mand that the negro slave should be taken into the 
service of the Republic against its own citizens. Is this 
folly, or is it craft which seeks to accomplish its purpose 
by accustoming the people’s mind to the idea involved 
in this phraseology ? If the latter, it will fail. It is an 
offence; an insult; breeding discontent, discord, and 
disaffection. Loyal! How can he be loyal who owes 
no allegiance ? Faithful! How can he be faithful to 
whom is committed no trust? Negroes, bond or free, 
have no share in our Union, and you know it. Cease, 
then, a use of language both offensive and ridiculous. 

But you would give the negro this position which he 
has not, and your perversion of his desire for freedom 
into loyalty to a Constitution not made for him, and 
faith to a cause to which he is not bound, is your enter¬ 
ing wedge. Cease this effort, too, unless you would sec 


10 


your wedge rive society in sunder in the Free States, as 
well as in the Slave—among the loyal as well as the 
disloyal. Why ? Simply because we will not endure 
to he mixed up in an equality of any sort with negroes. 
We have civil war now; but the attempt to do this 
will bring on a worse than civil war, helium jplusquam 
civile. Call this prejudice, if you will. It is, at least, 
not blind prejudice. The negro is, in a certain degree, 
offensive to us in any position—as an equal, in any sense, 
insufferable. Accept this fact; take it as an axiom 
before you speculate any more upon the subject. It 
has always been so with our race; and, until human 
nature changes, it must always be so. Do you ask 
why ? (for there are some men who will ask the why of 
an instinct or a sentiment.) Why do men loathe a toad ? 
There is no more harmless creature under the sun: a 
dove is not more timid, a butterfly not more incapable 
of doing injury. And yet to have one touch your lips! 
What man, not callous or cowardly, would not sooner 
charge a rebel battery ? Feelings like this are beyond 
reason, if not above it. Our aversion to the negro in 
any position which makes equality of intercourse even 
possible, is of this kind. It is as old as our race ; and, 
it is safe to say, will be as enduring. Who that attends 
to his dramatic duties, and reads his Sliakspeare, forgets 
that our great poet makes even the Moor “ a sooty 
thing ” that Desdemona first “ feared to look at,” 
though the individual was that most attractive charac¬ 
ter to woman-kind, a brave soldier and a successful 
general. But in the inferior nature and repulsive traits 
of the negro we find no justification for oppressing him. 
On the contrary, cause why we should treat him with 
kindness, and the more because of the wrong which he 
has suffered at the hands of his superiors. Yet remem¬ 
ber well that we fight not for him, but for our own 


11 


priceless heritage. TVe mean to absolve this nation of 
all responsibility for his enslavement, and by all lawful 
and constitutional means to purge the whole land of 
the wrong and the curse of chattel bondage. And— 
yet greater and higher purpose—we mean to lift the 
degraded millions of our own race in the Slave States 
into the dignity of that manhood and that American 
citizenship which is their birthright. As to the negro, 
he is with us, but not of us. He is an inhabitant of 
the land, but not one of its people. In American citi¬ 
zenship he has neither part nor lot. We are not fight¬ 
ing his battles; and shall we be so lost to self-respect as 
to ask him to fight ours ? If after we have made him 
free, he chooses to remain here, protected by our laws, 
and treated with Christian kindness, he must yet re¬ 
main a grotesque blemish upon society, and servile, 
though not a slave. Otfend us no more by grinding us 
up together with him in your word-mill. Talk no more 
in the same breath of his loyalty and ours, of his faith 
and ours. The liberties for which our fathers fought 
were theirs and ours, not his. The Constitution to 
which we are loyal was made, not for him, but for us. 
The flag to which we are faithful is the sign of our na¬ 
tionality, not of his. Confound no more his dumb hope 
of deliverance from stripes and labor with our patriot¬ 
ism ; his self-seeking with our self-sacrifice. Cease to 
do this, unless you would bring a sword also into the 
North. Cast down your black idol, and, on week days, 
worship your country. Do this, and “ all things else 
shall be added unto you,” even his freedom; which God 
grant. 

Live the Republic! 

Populus. 


Nbw York, May 81 et, 1S62. 







































































































































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